So, why was God so hard on His people? Is it somehow a sin to want some variety in your diet? Wasn’t it natural for the people to want a little meat or some vegetables every now and then?

Sure, but that really wasn’t the problem. Notice in Numbers 11:5 the people compared their current diet – a diet made up of miraculous food God showered on them every morning – to what they had back in Egypt. And in Numbers 11:18, God reveals what they were really saying – “It was better for us in Egypt.”

In short, the problem wasn’t that the people wanted some meat to eat. The problem was that they had begun to long for the days before God entered into a covenant with them. Because of the difficulties involved in their new life of freedom, they longed for their old life, their life of slavery. Or, in New Testament terms, they were preferring the pleasures of the world to the discipline involved in the Christian life.

And we can understand that temptation, can’t we? Putting aside one’s worldly desires in order to cultivate the gifts of the Spirit is difficult. Swimming upstream against an increasingly godless culture is hard, and it’s so tempting to just give up and start drifting along with everyone else, to shift our focus back to worldly things, to things we can touch and taste and comprehend, to turn away from the God Who has redeemed us for Himself and Who calls us to devote ourselves exclusively to Him.

So, God did to the people of Israel what He still does to us at times. Sometimes he gives us a snootful of whatever it is that we think we want more than Him. Sometimes He lets us experience the emptiness, the pain that comes from devoting our lives to anyone or anything other than Him. For sometimes it is only that kind of pain that can bring us to our senses and bring us back to God.

Numbers 11:18-20 (NASB)

18 “And say to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the ears of the LORD, saying, “Oh that someone would give us meat to eat! For we were well-off in Egypt.” Therefore the LORD will give you meat and you shall eat.
19 ‘You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days,
20 but a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you; because you have rejected the LORD who is among you and have wept before Him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?”‘”